Saturday, 21 September 2013

Light, lies and ... video next?

There are plenty of very competent journalists around in the specialist press, and some who are very perceptive, knowledgeable or persistent. But there aren't all that many who are funny. One who is, is Ray Molony, publisher of Lux magazine, and one of the best informed people writing about lighting today. I shared an office with him for a while, and he ploughed genially through an enormous workload. But it was not until I saw him presenting at an awards ceremony that I realised what a sense of humour he had.
He had collected examples of bad lighting from around the globe (apparently this was a regular party piece and so people sent him examples) and had the audience, admittedly fuelled by cheap fizz, in stitches.
Now he is at it again, not in a London hotel but on a LinkedIn group. He has put up a post entitled 'Yeah, right, the 12 biggest lies in lighting' Some require a certain amount of technical knowledge (ie I don't entirely understand them), but you get a flavour of his approach from point 6:

‘This PFI streetlighting scheme provides value for council taxpayers’In the same way that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the bailout of the banks and the Millennium Dome gave such a handsome return to taxpayers.

and from number 12: ‘I promise to return the sample’If you're serious about getting your £900 Foscarini designer luminaire back, you'll have to come to my house and prise it from my cold, dead fingers.

The response has been enormous, and acts like a mini tutorial on what the major concerns are in the lighting industry.